Word.ws English Dictionary

pok kai

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Singapore/ˈpɔk̚ kai/

pok kai adjective: having no money; broke; bankrupt.

Adjective

pok kai (not comparable)

  1. (Manglish, Singlish, slang) Having no money; broke; bankrupt.
    • Out shopping, child to parent. “Daddy I want this, daddy I want that.” Daddy, “Daddy pok kai awreddy^([sic]), ask your mummy.”2003, Sylvia Toh Paik Choo, The complete Eh, Goondu!
    • Today I went to Swensen's for dinner, even when I'm totally pok-gai.2010 March 12, “No Words”, in Pearl, retrieved 05 Nov 2015

Forms of pok kai

alternative formpokai
alternative formpok-gai
alternative formpok-kai

Origin of pok kai

Cantonese 仆街 (puk1 gaai1, “fall onto street, drop dead, go to hell, [Singapore, Malaysia] to have no money)”), from 仆 (puk1, “fall”) + 街 (gaai1, “street”).

Questions about pok kai

What does pok kai mean?
Pok kai means having no money; broke; bankrupt.
What part of speech is pok kai?
Pok kai is an adjective.
How do you pronounce pok kai?
Pok kai is pronounced /ˈpɔk̚ kai/ (Singapore).

Words near pok kai in the dictionary

  1. Pojoaques
  2. POJOs
  3. POK
  4. pok chwee
  5. Pok Fu Lam
  6. pok kai
  7. Pok'ot'u
  8. pok-a-tok
  9. pok-ta-pok
  10. poka
  11. poka-yoke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pok kai (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pok kai.ogg.

Cite this entry: “pok kai.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pok_kai. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.